The German Swimming Federation (DSV) has announced a 31-member strong team for the pool competitions at the 2018 European Championships in Glasgow, which will take place from 3 to 9 August.
Among the participants are eleven swimmers who managed to undercut the required German standards in the individual events. German Head Coach (Swimming), Henning Lambertz, pointed out that, compared to the seven athletes who managed to undercut the standards for the 2017 World Championships in individual disciplines, this is an increase of more than 50%.
Other swimmers have taken their chances to join the team after the lowering of the relay nomination standards, with relay swimmers also likely to be eligible for individual starts. Lambertz assumes that all relays will reach the finals on the current perfomance level.
For the first time in many years, Marco Koch, (World record holder in the 200m breaststroke (SC), winner of the silver medal in this event at the 2016 European LC Championships) isn’t part of the team. Koch wasn’t able to crack the qualification times in a prelim’s and final’s race (2:10,45/2:08,20) at the same competition during the qualification period. He wasn’t satisfied with his performances and stated at the German Open in Berlin that with his current times in the 200m breaststroke around 2:10, he doesn’t want to compete in Glasgow. Koch got a wild card for the 2017 World Championships but he doesn’t want this again for the 2018 European LC Championships in his actual shape.
German team for the 2018 European Championships:
Fauen (15): Leonie Beck, Lisa Graf, Franziska Hentke, Sarah Köhler, Laura Riedemann, Celine Rieder , Annika Bruhn, Anna Dietterle, Reva Foos, Isabel Gose, Jenny Mensing, Johanna Roas (München), Aliena Schmidtke, Jessica Steiger, Marie Pietruschka
Männer (16): Philip Heintz, Johannes Hintze, Henning Mühlleitner, Florian Wellbrock, Damian Wierling, Christian Diener, Christoph Fildebrandt, Jacob Heidtmann , Josha Salchow, Fabian Schwingenschlögl, Poul Zellmann , Marius Zobel, Jan-Philip Glania, Marius Kusch, Maximilian Pilger, Peter Varjasi